Car had head swap approximately 2,000 miles ago. At the time I did notice a lot of oil around the turbo:
Cleaned it all up, check for play in the bearings, seemed fine. I refitted it and checked it 1,500 miles later and found that the oil feed pipe was leaking. Looking on Servicebox, I saw that it should have a rubber o-ring which wasn't present. I've cleaned it up again and refitted the pipe with the correct o-ring (not an easy job
). At the time I noticed that inside of the turbo pipes were a bit oily, especially considering they were well cleaned out when they were off for the head swap.Then last night on an unrelated task I found some oil under the LDA lid on the fuel pump, which I know is definitely not normal. So I'm assuming the turbo is past it's best? The car runs great, doesn't smoke and has plenty of power. No noticeable oil level drop. Could oil from a leaking oil feed pipe work it's way into the turbo (I don't see how)? Recon turbos seem very expensive. Some people say a DIY rebuild is easy, others say it needs specialist balancing equipment.